Learning to walk before I run

Karmacat

All good news there - overtime, environmental benefit, and getting your space back.  DD2 is growing so quickly!

edinburgher

Woohoo - earned £4 and passed the £50 payment threshold for YLive while waiting for DD1's swimming lesson to end

savingholmes

Nice to do someone a favour.

Well done on the surveys

edinburgher

A busy day! Did an hour of overtime in the morning, completed a Prolific study for £5, took down all of the Christmas decorations with Mrs E (it takes a good bit longer with a second tree) and got the house back to normal. Then went out for a long walk in the dark (was feeling a bit stir crazy after being inside all day) and picked up a couple of bargains at Mr S including an 18-month matured Christmas pudding laced with cognac (£6.75 down to £2.25) and a Christmas tub of Twiglets (£2 down to 60p).

Finance wise:

• Won Euromillions! £2.80 paid into my SIPP (£3.50 after tax relief)
  
• 10p cashback from TCB
• £33.95 paid off the CC
• £32.50 before tax for the overtime
• £5 for the Prolific study
• Realised that a Harry Potter Lego set that I bought for DD1 Christmas (HP currently out of favour) can hopefully be sold on FB marketplace for a small profit, another £45 towards the CC once I find a buyer, Mrs E is our FB selling guru
  

I do feel very guilty as we have had a takeaway for 2 days in a row (from our personal spends accounts). This totally undoes my positive start to the NY (porridge made with water for every weekday this week and lighter lunches). No justification for it other than being tired and hungry, we even have a full meal plan and had also defrosted an easier option because we knew we'd be tired after all the tidying. I need to order less takeaways the same way I need to save more money!

A little deflated after completing the coding challenge I'd been taking part in. It felt like I was being spoonfed too much (you couldn't really fail it with enough trial and error), I genuinely didn't have the energy for it after my usual shift (8-6ish Mon-Thu) and it didn't enthuse me enough to want to fork out £7,000-8,000 for a course (even if I had that sort of money sitting around spare). It's a bit chicken and egg - how the hell is anybody with a full-time job (never mind weans) meant to consistently set aside 12-15 hours a week minimum to study an intellectually challenging skill? Does anybody have any suggestions for studying with a job and a family (or one of those Hermione Granger magic clocks that give you more time)?

Plan tomorrow is to do something relaxing with the whole family.

Cheery_Daff

Do you need to set aside 12-15 hours a week? Can it be something you do over a longer period? 

I'm quite a fan of this guy's work in relation to fitting in learning stuff into a small space of time: 

https://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2016/07/28/ultralearn-diy-1/

Oddly enough, he also has a post specifically about learning coding

https://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2019/07/08/learn-to-code/

Obviously nobody is going to be able to magic you up an extra few hours each day (wouldn't that be nice?!) but his thing is all about being more effective with the time you do set aside, even if it's only a bit. 

Good luck!

And congratulations on winning the lottery! 😁

edinburgher

@Cheery_Daff - 12-15 hours a week over the course of a year was the time that one course provider advised was necessary. Thank you for the blog links, I skimmed the coding one but will digest both properly tomorrow.

Second time in a week I've won the lottery  

edinburgher

I am very impatient. Have set myself a much more challenging goal of paying off the CC by my 40th birthday (end of March). Will need to pay off £40 a day - virement is going to be stretched to breaking point £74.18 paid off today.

No cashback, surveys, savings interest, sales or other endorphin-inducing financial news Take heed people - this is what happens when you gamify your finances

South_coast

It's rubbing off on me now as well, Ed 🤦‍♀️! I had a thought the other day that as my savings and LISA are both earning around £1/day in interest, it would be nice if I could put £1/day into the ISA. Now, January was easy, as one of the funds is set to income and I'd had about £27 in dividends come in, which I just reinvested. No plan for February yet though 🤔!

edinburgher

Today we went to our local big park and had a rather brisk walk in the winter sunshine. We also shared some chips and a couple of breakfast rolls from the cafe there, that "fewer takeaways" thing definitely working for us We then popped into the garden centre (annual 50% off Christmas decorations) and picked up a truly mad motorised swirling glitter and water candle with a flickering LED flame for DD1's room (£6) and a very jazzy light up candle arch for MIL (bit of a tradition there of getting her light up and/or glittery decorations) (£25).

Feeling quite anxious about work tonight, I have 3 pieces of work from 2022 that are now considerably overdue. Partly to do with overwork but partly to do with procrastination as well, truth be told. I'm going to try and blitz the one that is closest to being finished tomorrow, feeling quite guilty.

LadyWithAPlan

I am not sure guilt is ever enough to get me to stop procrastinating on work projects (as a freelancer) - normally a tight deadline keeps me on track, no definite deadline  no definite delivery date ,.... so I have to find ways to motivate myself to get them done, often by me promising feedback/delivery  by a certain date/time etc even when I have not been asked for it. 
So forgive yourself - its been xmas and you have kids and then spring into action and knock them over the line one by one. 


Loving the sound of your new xmas decorations